


Halcyon

by Brightknightie



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Day Off, F/M, Pre-Canon, Whales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 19:23:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17049134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brightknightie/pseuds/Brightknightie
Summary: Duncan and Tessa take each other whale-watching. An idyll.





	Halcyon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [killabeez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/killabeez/gifts).



_Summer 1992_

“I feel like we’re skipping school,” Tessa laughed. She gestured across the marina as they strode past boat after boat. “What if someone comes to the store?”

Duncan shrugged. “They’ll come back.”

“Sure they will.” She bumped his shoulder with hers, and then held up their tickets to check the pier and slip numbers. “That ‘Closed for fumigation’ sign you hung is so inviting.”

“Well, we don’t have one that says ‘Closed for whale watching.’” He squeezed her free hand.

She squeezed back, and they swung their grip as they walked.

Duncan squinted up at the bright morning sky. Here on shore, the wind tossing Tessa’s ponytail had no bite. That would change as they headed out. Advised by the brochure and common sense, Tessa wore her wool-lined yellow coat; Duncan wore a similar black one. Both carried backpacks. As far as Duncan knew, Tessa’s held only her sketching supplies and purse. In the extra-long sports bag over his shoulder, he’d packed their gloves, hats, sunscreen, and the like, as well as the lunch he’d made for them.

And his katana, of course. Duncan cherished that this life rarely required his sword. But his blade was a part of him, always. As Connor had taught. As every battle since had drilled.

“Oh, is this where we’re going?” Duncan plucked one of their tickets from Tessa’s fingers and pretended to match the number to the nearest slip, home to a cozy houseboat. For the first time in years, his barge came to mind as more than a leased-out line-item; he should look into getting it back for the next time they were in Paris. He raised his eyebrows at Tessa. “I bet the view would be incredible.”

Tessa blinked. She looked as if she weren’t sure she’d heard correctly. Then she rolled her eyes. “The tour will leave without us, and I don’t jump off bridges.”

He grinned and caught up as she continued down the pier.

“There!” Tessa pointed. “Just around the curve, there’s a dozen people. Could that be our group?”

“Looks like it.” Duncan saw various adults and small kids, too young to belong in school this weekday, milling around. Closer, he spotted the tour company’s sign. He visually sorted their fellow passengers into likely tourists, local families with visiting relatives, and one young man who didn’t seem to fit. The professional-grade Nikon camera around the man’s neck made Duncan wonder if he were a journalist of some kind.

As they stepped alongside the boat, Duncan saw that an exterior deck wrapped around interior seating behind large windows. He’d guess fifty feet. Maybe nineteen knots, cruising. Instinctively, he memorized the boat’s name and harbor; he’d had to send more than one SOS in his time.

“Welcome, ladies and gentleman!” A short woman with a bright blue cap, jacket, and megaphone came down the ramp from the boat. “I’m Kim, and I’ll be your marine naturalist today. I’ll also be taking your tickets as you board. So if you’ll please form a single line and watch your step…”

The passengers funneled inside for the safety talk and wildlife orientation. The boat got underway.

“Has anyone here been whale watching before? Show of hands?” Kim asked. “I see a few. Great!”

Tessa looked a question at Duncan, whose hand hadn’t budged. He’d told her about his time in Haida Gwaii, when the original totem poles had still stood where they belonged. Another world. He shrugged.

“Actually,” Kim continued, “whale watching is still pretty new as a commercial industry. The first tour in the world was only forty years ago. And it’s just in the past ten to twenty years that scientists have really been studying these mammals we used to call ‘killer whales.’ Who here already knew that orcas are more closely related to dolphins than to whales?”

Some kids raised their hands. Duncan looked a question back at Tessa, who definitely did know that. She’d been researching a sculpture. This time, she shrugged.

When Kim finished, the young man with the camera was the first to rush to the deck rails, presumably to scan the waters for the tell-tale dorsal fins or breaching behavior that Kim had described. But the man soon turned and faced the passengers; Duncan revised his hypothesis to junior insurance investigator. Most other passengers followed, including Duncan and Tessa, for all that Kim had told them it could be over an hour before they caught up with the nearest pod.

Duncan was happy to stand quietly at the rail. He spread his stance to keep his balance as the boat pushed through swells toward the sea. Looking across the water at more water, waiting, he felt complete. The sun on his skin. The sea in his nostrils. Close enough to touch Tessa and be touched by her. Either could reach out and would be pulled in.

Tessa had been in Marseille for weeks, overseeing a sculpture installation. Before that, Duncan had been in Tokyo, facilitating an antique sale. Phone calls crossed time zones. It wasn’t much out of their whole life together. Yet the longer they’d been apart, the more he’d felt like a wind-up toy running down.

When Tessa had stepped out of that taxi in front of their store yesterday, her smile had hit Duncan like what a quickening ought to be. All the energy. All the strength. Only joy and life.

That she let him love her had stunned him almost every day for a dozen years.

If the Game could just keep passing them by, near misses, dodged...

They’d planned this outing together as something to look forward to on the other side of being apart. But the whale watching specifically had been Duncan’s idea. Tessa had recently become fascinated by a certain Canadian artist, and most particularly his sculpture of a breaching orca. She’d been checking out books from the university library. Duncan could give her this encounter, beyond her books. He felt acutely self-satisfied.

Years later, it would occur to him to wonder whether she’d felt the same at this moment — self-satisfied in giving _him_ this encounter, beyond his memories — after what he’d told her about his time with the Haida people.

“I thought of something on the flight home the other day,” Tessa said. “I just remembered.” She took his hand. Her fingers were freezing; Duncan started to unshoulder his backpack to get their gloves. Before he could, she stepped closer, and continued very quietly, “When you’re on a boat or a plane, and the people around you are settled for a while… do you feel relieved? Unburdened, a little?”

Duncan blinked. He’d told her only some of it. She cut to his core regardless. “That no one with a grudge and a blade can come, you mean?”

She nodded.

“I usually think about it only the other way, if I’m trapped with someone.” He turned around to look at the families, the tourists, and the conspicuously inconspicuous guy with the camera. Duncan turned back toward the sea partly to keep his face out of the young man’s viewfinder. “You’re right. It is something to enjoy, isn’t it?” Duncan squeezed Tessa’s hand.

He remembered to get out their gloves and hats.

“How’re you folks doing?” Kim asked, working her way around the deck. “Are the sea lions holding you until we get out a bit further?” She pointed to black spots in the shining waves.

“Yes, very well,” Tessa replied. “Thank you.”

“These orcas that we’re heading for are what we call ‘residents.’ They live in complex, matrilineal, clan groups.” Kim pulled her own gloves out of her coat pockets and put them on. “Do you have any questions? Is there anything specific I can tell you?”

“Actually,” Tessa said, “are these the same kind of killer whales that we’d find further north, near Haida Gwaii?”

“I don’t— oh, the Queen Charlotte Islands? Yes, these, for sure, and possibly even all three orca subspecies. The so-called ‘offshore’ orca—”

The boat’s intercom projected the captain’s voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, you may want to take a look at two o’clock. It seems that one of the younger members of the T34 pod has wandered back our way.”

Kim and Duncan both pointed, for those who’d forgotten that the front of the boat had been designated “twelve o’clock.”

“We can stay here,” Duncan said as others moved. “We should get a decent angle— there, Tess!” The dorsal fin flashed.

“No, I missed— oh!” Tessa exclaimed. The orca breached, leaping fully out of the water. It slipped back in more smoothly than logic allowed for something so large. “That’s it; that’s the moment in Reid’s piece. Moments. Stylized and representational.”

“‘ _The Chief of the Undersea World_ ,’” Duncan named the sculpture, the orca, and the ancient tale that killer whales took human form and ruled an Atlantis-like kingdom. He’d told Tessa that story. She’d told it back to him, subtly different, from a library book.

The captain cut the engines. Kim hurried from group to group to point out the ever-shifting spot to watch, and to answer questions.

Without taking her eyes from where the orca played, Tessa said, “I knew that the water and cold would make it hard to draw out here. I hadn’t grasped the speed — it’s wonderful, impossible! I’ll have to watch, see, feel _hard_ now. I can sketch later.”

When the orca moved on, the captain revved the engines again. They resumed moving toward the open sea and the pod. Clouds rolled in. The wind picked up. Tessa shivered.

“Are you cold?” Duncan asked.

“Yes.”

“I have a blanket in here—” Duncan reached for his backpack again.

“What?” Tessa stopped him with her hand on his. “Oh! You mean, do I want to be warmer?”

“Yes, sweetheart, that’s what I mean.”

Tessa smiled. “It’s about time for lunch, isn’t it? Let’s go inside.”

The seats and tables behind the windows had a view nearly as good as standing at the rail, with none of the wind or spray. Duncan unpacked their meal and discovered that he was starved. He enjoyed eating what he’d made; he enjoyed Tessa enjoying it even more.

He’d missed her so much.

He recognized some selfishness in that. But recognizing it hadn’t been enough to let it go, this time. It had crawled into dark recesses. Was what they had best for her, too, or mostly for him? Tessa’s choices were her own, she’d shown time and again. He knew better. But he felt guilty.

“What is it?” Tessa asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re lying,” she said. “You’re not very good at lying, you know. ‘Look over there!’, yes. Lies, no.”

“Yeah.” He leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the table. “I once met a man who … dated younger women. Much younger.”

“Much, _much_ younger?”

“Uh-huh.” Duncan hoped that someone had taken Axel’s loathsome head by now. “It made him feel young, for a while. But if the woman, well, grew up, she wouldn’t make him feel that way anymore. So he would, uh, end it.”

“And look for the next?” Tessa’s eyes narrowed. “I know the type. In the art world. At university. In business. They’re not uncommon, sadly.”

“Do I do that to you? At all?” Duncan asked in a rush. His voice was rough. Without the burst of seeing her again after this stretch apart, he knew he wouldn’t have tried to put it into words. “You make me feel young, too. It’s like, every time I see you, everything is new. So, I, you…”

Tessa let him trail off. She tilted her head, as if seeking an angle that showed him more clearly. She chewed her lip.

Finally, she asked, “Duncan, what does our home look like?”

“Nice? A little cluttered, maybe?”

She pursed her lips. “I mean, my studio is metal and wire, concrete and drywall. Your office is stone and hardwood. But what about us — our living room, kitchen, bedroom?”

“Rugs,” he realized slowly. “Pillows, tapestries, curtains. Placemats.”

“Who’s taking care of whom?”

Silence rose, gently.

When Duncan felt enough better to feel absurd, Tessa said: “And if you think that you’ve kept me from growing up — that I’m still the same person I was a dozen years ago — I’m insulted, Duncan MacLeod. Try again.”

Duncan wished he could be clever with words, just once. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The captain’s voice came over the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, take a look at one o’clock! We’re coming up on the T34 pod. We’ll be cutting the engines to bother them as little as possible.”

Tessa turned in her chair. A clan of orcas carried on their affairs a hundred yards from the boat.

Some passengers, including the man with the camera, rushed to better vantage points. Years later, when Joe introduced that man to Duncan, Duncan would find that he remembered the camera swinging on its straps. The camera’s swinging would carry him back to this day, to the sea smell and sunlight and Tessa. He’d have to blink and swallow before he could shake the man’s hand.

Duncan and Tessa stayed where they were and watched hard. The orcas each went their own ways, together yet distinct, with only dorsal fins showing above the water, or nothing showing, or a breach, leaping as if into orbit before returning to their world undersea.

When the orcas moved on, the engines banged up. The boat made a wide circle and headed for shore more swiftly than it had left.

Eyes bright, Tessa pulled out her sketching gear, capturing shapes and motions before they faded from her inner sight. From such seeds, Duncan knew, she could re-make, re-name creation.

It would be autumn soon, he realized, counting up their weeks apart. He almost regretted having used the whale-watching idea now. Tessa’s birthday was right around the corner.

  


**— end —**

  


**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer.** This is fanfiction of _Highlander_ , which belongs to Davis/Panzer. Please don’t mistake it for anything else.
> 
> **Inspiration & canon.** For HLH_Shortcuts 2018, Killa’s request included Duncan, relationships, and reunions, with attention to what the characters mean to each other. A scene in “The Darkness,” where Duncan tells Richie why he’s proposed, caught my attention for putting into words what’s usually unspoken about what Tessa means to Duncan, and also for those words’ tiny, tinny resonance with “Rite of Passage,” which I imagined could gnaw at Duncan.
> 
> **History & reality.** Bill Reid (1920-1998) is the artist in whom Tessa is interested; his “Chief of the Undersea World” is the sculpture that caught her imagination. Haida Gwaii is the archipelago once called the Queen Charlotte Islands, the center of the Haida nation. The tour is loosely based on info from the website of the Puget Sound Express and, of course, Wikipedia.
> 
> **Beta.** Thank you, Batdina, Skieswideopen, and Merfilly, for identifying bumpy bits that might jolt a reader out of the story! Thank you, Batdina, for your recognition, and Skieswideopen for asking questions! Thank you all for your kind generosity! I hope I implemented your insights.
> 
> **Thank you for reading!** Let me know what you think?


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